Validating IBANs in African countries result in 'Unknown country-code' error

[n49o7]

IBANs with the following prefixes return an error: ['BF', 'BJ', 'CI', 'CM', 'MA', 'MG', 'ML', 'NE', 'RW']

The corresponding Country objects in pycountries are:

[Country(alpha_2='BJ', alpha_3='BEN', flag='🇧🇯', name='Benin', numeric='204', official_name='Republic of Benin'),
 Country(alpha_2='BF', alpha_3='BFA', flag='🇧🇫', name='Burkina Faso', numeric='854'),
 Country(alpha_2='CI', alpha_3='CIV', flag='🇨🇮', name="Côte d'Ivoire", numeric='384', official_name="Republic of Côte d'Ivoire"),
 Country(alpha_2='CM', alpha_3='CMR', flag='🇨🇲', name='Cameroon', numeric='120', official_name='Republic of Cameroon'),
 Country(alpha_2='MA', alpha_3='MAR', flag='🇲🇦', name='Morocco', numeric='504', official_name='Kingdom of Morocco'),
 Country(alpha_2='MG', alpha_3='MDG', flag='🇲🇬', name='Madagascar', numeric='450', official_name='Republic of Madagascar'),
 Country(alpha_2='ML', alpha_3='MLI', flag='🇲🇱', name='Mali', numeric='466', official_name='Republic of Mali'),
 Country(alpha_2='NE', alpha_3='NER', flag='🇳🇪', name='Niger', numeric='562', official_name='Republic of the Niger'),
 Country(alpha_2='RW', alpha_3='RWA', flag='🇷🇼', name='Rwanda', numeric='646', official_name='Rwandese Republic')]

Interestingly, the BICs located in these countries are valid.

[Natim]

Hello @n49o7, do you have IBAN examples we can use to test the issue?

[Natim]

Hello @n49o7 I couldn't find countries listed above in this list: https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/countrylist/ or in the IBAN registry 2016 or IBAN registry 2023

[n49o7]

Hello @Natim,

These countries are present on iban.com. I imagine that there is a degree of integration with the standard. On Wikipedia, they are listed as 'aspirational'. They might be on-track to be accepted soon.

IBAN/BIC checking websites (example) typically also show many more banks than the swift website, according to actual SwiftNet capabilities.

I have no opinion on the right thing to do.

[mdomke]

In release 2024.1.1.post0 I added all countries that are listed on Wikipedia so that general support for these African countries should be available. The information about the BBAN structure is however very scarce, so that detail information (e.g. account number, bank code), might not always be available.